A podcast all about Japanese cartoons and comics as discussed by three self-proclaimed experts in the world of anime and manga! Plus anime news / reviews, coverage of classic anime, hentai / yaoi, and much, much more. Updated every week. We hope.

Anime World Order Show # 110 – Your Christmas Gift is Us Reading Emails

No, it’s not the end of the world: Clarissa’s semester has ended, which means we can get back to the usual…er, actually it didn’t end so recently that we have something to review. So we read three emails instead.

(4:21 – 15:57): What do we think of Rainbow? Are we looking forward to Mamoru Hosoda’s new movie?
(15:57 – 32:00): Why aren’t there more females in positions of power in anime, manga or videogames? If you’re curious, the names mentioned offhand were as follows:

You can use this very resource to find other key names that we neglected to mention when you make your comments. BUT WE’LL KNOW WHAT YOU DID.
(32:00 – 47:00): If music licensing is so screwy, couldn’t they just release Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure in America with the ending credits song changed?
(47:00 – 49:55): What’s coming up next (maybe)

Related

19 Replies to “Anime World Order Show # 110 – Your Christmas Gift is Us Reading Emails”

As much as they aren’t heralded as particularly the bastions of feminist material, Kyoto Animation have actually employed a few female staff members in relatively senior positions – I mean, K-On! was directed by Naoko Yamada, and they employed Noriko Takao as an episode director and storyboardist until she left to work as assistant director on last years The iDOLM@STER (and she’s also directing the upcoming Saint Young Men anime adaptation).

I’m pretty sure there’s plenty others (when they played Hotorubi no Mori E at Scotland Loves Anime two years ago, the producers from both Aniplex and Brains Base they sent over to talk about it were female, as was the Berserk movie producer they sent over this year), but I guess a lot of the are probably less outspoken than male staff members. You know how crazy Japanese anime fandom can get sometimes…

You’ve actually forgotten a pretty obvious woman in anime: KEIKO NOBUMOTO! Not only did she create Cowboy Bebop, she’s also the screenwriter behind Macross Plus, Tokyo Godfathers, Wolf’s Rain (maybe that one’s less impressive), and something called “Fly! Peek the Whale” that Koji Morimoto directed and is therefore awesome. Definitely one of my favorite writers in anime. [I didn’t forget her. The last I heard, she’s no longer working in the anime industry. –Daryl]

Also another female writer who worked on Cowboy Bebop is Michiko Yokote, who wrote a lot of those great episodes with Faye’s backstory and was involved in series composition for Genshiken, Princess Tutu, and… uhh… Seven of Seven…

General commentary on the Japanese work/life balance: in 2009, one of the issues the Democratic Party of Japan campaigned on was access to childcare. At the time, a number of English language news outlets had stories about the new Japanese working man and woman: she wants a real career without sacrificing parenthood, he wants to not spend every weeknight getting shitfaced, watching his boss manhandle waitresses and maybe to have a relationship with his kids. Divorce typically sends kids with the mom, on the assumption that she’ll move back in with her parents.

On the topic of women actually working in the industry, one comment from the email I found particularly telling was the line about women getting men to not harass them. Y’know, since men can’t control themselves.

On the topic of tv censorship being rolled back for blu-ray, I wish that were the case of Suki-tte Ii Na Yo. One of the things that remarkable about the comic is how well it handles sex. Yamato is frank about his desire for Mei and just as frank about his willingness to wait until she’s ready for sex. This is done without shaming the couples who are sexually active. It’s a very nuanced presentation that a nice antidote to the “I love you so much I can’t control myself” message. This anime isn’t avoiding this, but it’s rushing the story so much that this theme is much less effective. If only Yamato’s erections could be edited back into the video release. That wouldn’t help what they’ve done to Mei’s character, of course.

Also Chihaya-furu is terrific! Now there’s a shoujo sports series! The pacing was very well done. When anime adaptations of manga blow the pacing, it drives me nuts.

Just a general comment – This episode is evidence that you guys can just all get on a Skype call, talk about whatever you want, and it works. I love your reviews, but I’ll take what I can get since this podcast is what keeps me going on my long commutes.

Also, I am the other person who didn’t like the trivia episode (but it was still better than the best episode of Anime Pulse), but I understand Gerald’s point about how hard it is to write good trivia questions. Go for it again! It will get better the more you do it.

Except it isn’t amazing to watch so it loses what’s good about Ghost in the Shell. Psycho-Pass was written by a bunch middle-schoolers who read Minority Report, looked up some philosophers and philosophical concepts on Wikipedia, and got funding for a cartoon. It is not thought-provoking to propose that it’s a bad idea to run society with a computer that doesn’t understand how humans work and doesn’t even apparently prevent crime very well. If you take the computer that’s clearly a terrible idea out of the picture, the questions being asked about human nature
are decent ones if you ask them about an actual society that exists. As it is, the most you can get out of this waste of time is that the Dystopian Japanese Police have incredibly lax crisis training, computers are as bad at picking potential cops as they are at spotting criminals, and, oh shit y’all, is a sociopath who incites others to murder the only person who can see the world for what it is!?!?

I will say that Psycho-Pass is so terrible that it’s actually a pretty fun watch. It’s like hanging out with a teenager who’s just started wearing too much eyeshadow all the time, only you don’t have to laugh at the terrible poetry internally and then feel guilty about it.

Let’s put the responsibility/blame on who is behind this: Gen Urobuchi, who was also behind Madoka Magica. People who know Faust also made the same points about him just taking from Faust, rather than having familiarity with it.

Fair enough, I was just astonished to see people reacting so favorably to a show that struck me as hilariously wrongheaded. I especially don’t get the Ghost in the Shell comparisons. That’s a gorgeous, exciting action movie rendered less interesting by silly nittering on the mind/body problem. Even then it sets up natural feeling mind/body problem. Psycho-Pass is a bunch of how can we know we’re human if we trust our minds to a MACHINE?!?!?!? Then it shows us a scenario where the machine is really badly designed and the humans make really poor use of the information the machine gives them. This show is Dystopian NCIS with pretensions and less distinctive characters.

I, for one, appreciate this Christmas present. It’s a whole lot better than the socks I usually get. Although socks are handy… no, this is still better.

I remember Rainbow. That was a unique show, and I’m not surprised it didn’t garner much attention from the current anime crowd. I think the show peaked early though, the show was at its absolute best when they were inside the prison, and some of the events that followed weren’t as impressive. Still a nice show overall though, and definitely a style of show I’d like to see more of.

Merry Christmas / Happy holidays to all three of you, hope you have a great time.

I have something positive to say about the Spike Video Game Awards: I actually heard that it was better this year than it was last year. Yes, there were hilarious blunders (The Gabe Newell gaffe, followed by the bungled apology tickled my ribs) here and there, but the response online was not as venomous as last years was. They actually learned lessons and improved! I still wont watch it, but I don’t watch any awards shows. Recaps are all I need.

I’m seeing more and more women in the gaming industry. Not really in positions of power, but when I watch a developer video, I see more women in front of the camera.

On the subject of streaming, I’m shocked that people are either clueless about Hulu, or would rather go without an anime than sit through a few commercials. It’s free! Come on, watch some “Rainbow,” and get bummed out like I did! Also, companies like Funimation and Viz stream anime on their sites, and they are ad supported. Maybe part of the blame lies in the hands of these companies, but I know that Hulu advertises their service quite a bit.

It is my impression that one reason for having relatively few women in the video game industry is a milder version of what happens in Japan with anime: the video game industry is plagued with long hours and low job satisfaction. Once you get out of the poor single mother demographic. women are less willing to take this kind of job because they are more concerned with job satisfaction in general, as well as more likely to have a male breadwinner that they can fall back on so they are less willing to trade job satisfaction for higher pay.

Isn’t another problem with Jojo’s the band and music names? I don’t think you even mentioned it. They had to change all the names for the video games and for the Super Techno Arts version, and like changing music, this is something that the fans tend not to like (especially when you have that *and* the changes in music).

Well, with Tibetan Dog, I think the issue is less that it’s very important in Japan, and more that it doesn’t really have an audience. Going by the trailer, it seems to be too violent for a kids film, so I doubt you could sell it as one in America. Thing doesn’t even have a Blu-ray release in Japan. DVDs out though.

Also, when that movie came out, I saw little to no posters for it depending on where I went. Hell, I saw more posters for Nikkatsu’s new anime movie… but I guess that has Happy Science backing it.

On the issue of JoJo’s DVDs being hard to find… I was able to, in 2012, piece together all six discs by visiting a few FYE’s and hitting up Amazon. I’ve got all six and the box for about $60 total. So, it might not be impossible to gather all the discs, yet.